This post is from from my other blog here - Is Ask.com quitting search?
- Is Ask.com dumping Teoma?
- Is Ask becoming a search engine for Women?
There's been no end to the speculation over the future of the former search engine butler over the last few weeks. And really there have been few clear answers from the ranks at Ask.com or the IAC - well until now.Ask.com spokesman and VP, Nicholas Graham has been vigilantly watching all the speculation and putting out the spot fires that blog rumors have created. He even popped over to our post on
Ask.com's plans for Teoma last week.Needless to say he's been a busy man.In the fallout of some recent layoffs and obvious cost cutting, Graham has gone out and finally shared Ask.com's plans and re-aligned focus.According to an Interview with Jordan McCollum from
WebProNews, Graham has this to say:"The idea that we're going to become a 'women's site' is not correct......what we've found from our research is that there's a sizeable group of our core user base that is women. This core audience comes for certain types of searches, certain categories-reference (dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), health and entertainment. Our new strategy is to focus on building up our ability to render good answers in those categories for our core audience......the idea that we're not going to be a search engine anymore is not correct. We'll continue to cater to all sorts of people who come to search... We'll continue to be a great search engine, but a great search engine with a new focus."So for all our readers that are passionate fans of ask.com as a search engine - rest assured, Ask.com will remain with a strong commitment to being a relevant source of answers.And on whether they still have Google in their sights:According to Graham they're "not giving up on bettering Google", they're simply focusing on being a more relevant place for people to find answers and being "best at that".It's been a turbulent few weeks for
Ask.com and hopefully this clear direction will help them concentrate their efforts on an important core audience and create a sustainable advantage over their competitors.
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